CHAPTER XIV
MARY FACES A CRISISClifford had just gone, and Mary now sat alone in the ornate drawing-room which for a brief week she had occupied as “Mrs. Grayson,” and considered rapidly the situation in which her own will and the unforeseen working-out of life and human nature had, within the last half-hour, suddenly placed her. Concrete questions, with their inseparable difficulties and dangers, rushed upon her: What was Clifford going to do? What was Jack going to do, whose mistress she had just declared herself to be before his father? And what would be the next move of Jack’s father, amiable forgiver of what he considered Jack’s discreet liaison, whose invitation to a yachting tour for two among West Indian seas lay in tiny fragments upon the floor?—which invitation, she knew, he wou
